This is one of the latest products of the class, an iPhone “lockscreen” digital clock, with what I think is a very snazzy, modern visual face. It was designed in class by student Alex McNerney, and it is fair to say it is the first “commercial product” to emerge from our FabLab studio. It’s not available in the Apple app store, but rather on the “jailbreak” iPhone Cydia store.

I am writing you because I believe you share with me a passion to lead learning forward and I think you may be, like I am, eager to learn more about, practice, pilot, experiment with, collaborate around, and share advances in the arena often referred to as 21st century learning or “schools of the future.”At the NAIS meeting and around our regional meetings we have some of these opportunities with independent school associates, but speaking for myself and my colleague Chris Thinnes from Curtis School (CA), we want more: we are eager to broaden our network of forward-thinking educators to include the boldest and brightest public school district leaders in the nation, and we are finding this opportunity under the auspices of a new organization called EdLeader21.

Ken Kay, EdLeader21 CEO and founder/former President of the national Partnership for 21st century Skills, (P-21) will
speak with us via skype about this exciting new professional learning community for educational leaders of all sectors who want to work together to improve learning for all students.

Cheating is a plague upon schools across our nation, and it appears to be on the rise. During my time visiting schools, 21 in all, private and public, during my 2008 good high school blogging project, I often observed cheating– sometimes blatant, “public,” shameless cheating in front of me. But as severe as this problem is, it is not impossible for us as educators to respond, redirect, and resolve the crisis of cheating.

Two recent articles have recently surfaced the issue. First, in Edweek’s section “Focus on Student Behavior,” Sarah Sparks has a piece entitled Studies Shed Light on How Cheating Impedes Learning. Second, the APA (American Psychological Association) published a piece by Amy Novotney last spring with the appealingly succinct title, “Beat the Cheat.”

The two pieces overlap in the research they cite, the findings they report, and the recommendations they make. Both are constructed with strong research foundations; see their original pieces for the evidentiary basis of the claims quoted below.

Both are compelling, emphatic, and appalling in their articulation of the epidemic that is cheating.

From Edweek:

Of a nationally representative sample of more than 40,000 public and private high school students responding to the survey, 59.4 percent admitted to having cheated on a test—including 55 percent of honors students.

It continues, even worsens, in college.

From the APA:

researchers found that nearly 82 percent of a sample of college alumni admitted to engaging in some form of cheating as undergraduates.

Cheating is not only, obviously, indicative of a deeply disturbing lack of integrity; it can negatively impact the quality of learning for all, students who don’t and students who do cheat. Edweek:

Emerging evidence suggests students who cheat on a test are more likely to deceive themselves into thinking they earned a high grade on their own merits, setting themselves up for future academic failure. “We see that the effect of cheating is, the more we engage in dishonest acts, the more we develop these cognitive distortions—ways in which we neutralize the act and almost forget how much we are doing it.”

What’s worse still, cheating doesn’t stop on graduation day. APA:

People who cheat on exams in high school are three times more likely to lie to a customer or inflate an insurance claim compared with those who never cheated. High school cheaters are also twice as likely to lie to or deceive their boss and one-and-a-half times more likely to lie to a significant other or cheat on their taxes.

Edweek:

Moreover, such self-deception can lead to a “death of a thousand cuts” for a student’s honesty, Mr. Stephens said. “Kids start to disengage [from] responsibility habitually; cheating in high school does lead to dishonesty in the workplace as an adult,” he said.

For all of us who see ourselves as educating the future leaders, the future stewards, and the future innovators of our society and planet, the stakes are rising for the successful outcome of our efforts to end the cheating epidemic.

At the Family Association meeting presentation Tuesday about our English curriculum, we enjoyed a spirited discussion about the vital importance of writing instruction. We all agreed on the importance of developing strong skills in formal written expression: a mastery of technical competency in grammar, spelling, punctuation, paragraphing, and the common forms of expository and persuasive writing.

At St. Gregory we regularly check in with our graduates, and we are always gratified that they report with frequency that they are finding themselves very successful as writers in college and beyond, and that they find themselves far better prepared than most of their peers from other schools. One current example: Adam Gonzales, who is currently a freshman in university, is already writing for the University’s athletics website. We feel very confident that our students who are the product of our seven year (6-12), or four year (9-12) program, emerge with terrific confidence in their written expression, comfortable in their expressive fluency, and highly proficient in their technical command of the written form.

At the end of the Family Association discussion, I offered a peroration to the discussion, summing up what I as Head of School believe to be our school’s educational values, goals and philosophy about the development of fine writers. Afterwards, I was asked by many if I would write up my comments and share them more widely. What follows is a slightly expanded, modified version of my spoken remarks.

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It is important to remember that there are two, twin goals for any educational program of writing preparation, and they live in a dynamic tension which can, sometimes, in the short run, function as a zero-sum tension, such that overly emphasizing one, particularly in ways developmentally inappropriate, can result in the diminution of the other.

Our twin goals are both mastery of technical formalism in the written form and fluency, a confident written expressiveness that conveys one’s unique, individual voice. I could add to the latter not just confidence but a genuine enjoyment, even passion, for written expression.

Just as we rightly worry, even fear, that far too many secondary school graduates lack formal written proficiency, let’s not forget what should be a second source of great anxiety: many students emerge from middle and secondary school greatly lacking confidence and originality of voice, and indeed, many emerge simply hating to write. (more…)

A few months ago I shared here an update on the terrific happenings in our advisory program, now in its second year, at St. Gregory. As I wrote then, this new initiative incorporates into advisory a service learning program, and we motivated advisory groups to plan and commit to a larger service project by offering “mini-grants,” available through a formal, grant-writing, process.

Now here are the results! From a recent school newsletter:

As part of the One School, One City initiative, we’ve awarded 6 wonderful advisory project ideas with mini-grant funding raised from St. Gregory’s Family Association participation in the Shop & Give program. If you have not yet signed up with this program, please be sure to register at participating stores. The Family Association Shop & Give generated $1800 last year to support the following advisory projects:

Ms. Bancroft’s advisory will continue their work in the 6th grade courtyard building a community garden. They plan on purchasing seeds for produce and an orange tree! Their goal is to be able to cook a meal at Primavera using the produce they’ve grown.

Ms. Berry’s advisory will host presentations about desert biodiversity by The Sonoran Desert Museum. The presentations will take place on Challenge Day on April 20, 2012 and add a new component to St Gregory’s celebration of diversity.

Mr. Clashman’s advisory will establish a water harvesting system on Middle School campus by the administration building. They are partnering with a former alum and current U of A student who is helping with the logistics and design of the system. Their goal is to reduce our campus waste of water and aide in the beautification processes happening in the Middle School courtyards. (more…)

From time to time I post and share here pieces I have written as part of my role and responsibility as Head of St. Gregory. The following letter, which I prepared and which is co-signed by our Board Chair, was sent last week to all St. Gregory families, inviting them to re-enroll for next school year, a year I sadly will not be able to be a part of, but a year in which I know great things will continue to occur and great advances will continue to be made.

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February 1, 2012

Dear St. Gregory Families:

We write you to invite and encourage you to continue on next year as part of our St. Gregory community.

Adding value to a St. Gregory education is a very high priority of the school’s leadership, and we have made great strides forward we have made together. You may or may not know that in the past two years:

We became one of the first 1:1 laptop schools in Tucson, and provided resources for WIFI expansion, for netbooks for students not bringing their own, and for professional development for our faculty.

Our new advisory program is strengthening the relationships of teachers and students, and providing stronger teacher-mentors, improved service learning programs, and an enhanced sense of community; a student reporter for our school newspaper recently wrote: “Student response to advisories has been overwhelmingly positive in nature. “

We’ve added robotics programs in the Middle and Upper School, a new Science Olympiad competitive squad in the Upper School (which is a two time state-wide winner of the “rookie of the year” prize), a new Technology Design course, a TEDx speaker program, and several new innovation workshops for our students.

We’ve implemented new technologically enhanced educational assessments in both the Upper School (CWRA & PLAN) and middle school (MAP), which better enable us to determine how well our students are doing and how we can better improve and personalize their learning.

After a lapse of a few months, I found this morning a slot to share at all-school meeting a TED talk– and when I announced this, the room broke out into genuine applause. This is a very charming and sweet connection I am sharing with my St. Gregory students, one I will miss greatly: our shared “fandom” for TED talks.

After viewing, we had a great ten minute all-school conversation. First we focused upon the content– what is the relationship of happiness and productivity, how do we “filter” our experience, what are the five techniques for developing a positive outlook and happiness attitude, and do we agree with these five?

Express gratitude daily; deliberately choose to write or say thank you and express appreciation for what you have.

Journal.

Meditate.

Exercise.

Practice random acts of kindness.

Then we shifted to form: what made this talk so effective. Humor of course was the most important element, but we also discussed the way the presenter himself modeled a positive affect, and the way he used a personal story at the outset to build a sense of connection with his audience.

Take the twelve minutes for viewing this one: It is a very funny talk with a very meaningful message.